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News About Tech, Money and InnovationSun, 02 Aug 2015 19:00:51 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.3Copyright 2015, VentureBeatMicrosoft strikes a humble pose, and hopes to earn a shot at redemptionhttp://venturebeat.com/2015/07/30/microsoft-strikes-a-humble-pose-and-hopes-to-earn-a-shot-at-redemption/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/30/microsoft-strikes-a-humble-pose-and-hopes-to-earn-a-shot-at-redemption/#commentsThu, 30 Jul 2015 23:20:32 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1776648With the launch of Windows 10, Microsoft is telegraphing an attitude one doesn’t often see in companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars: Humility. The humility is a calculated posture, but I found it sort of touching. You see, humility is necessary in order to set the company up for redemption: Redemption from its years of […]
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The humility is a calculated posture, but I found it sort of touching. You see, humility is necessary in order to set the company up for redemption: Redemption from its years of arrogance as a market dominator and tin-eared monopolist, sure. But more immediately, redemption from its embarrassing failure to capture a significant portion of the mobile market, despite repeated attempts. And redemption from its missteps with Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, which found few fans, even among the Microsoft faithful.

Redemption is exactly what Microsoft needs if it’s going to achieve its most immediate goal: Getting one billion devices running Windows 10 within two years.

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In a meeting with Microsoft communications chief Frank X. Shaw this week, VentureBeat heard again and again that the company has made a realistic assessment of its recent failures, is ready to own up to them, and wants to make things better.

For example: The market reception for Windows Phone included “a lot of surprises,” Shaw deadpanned. He acknowledged that 3 percent market share is not where the company hoped to be in smartphones at this point.

Windows 8 did not find the traction the company had hoped for, and its compromises between tablet and PC users weren’t fully thought-through, Shaw said.

Even the beta-testing process for Windows 10 could be a bit “jarring,” Shaw acknowledged, as the company overhauled Windows piece by piece, sometimes resulting in a “Frankenstein-like” design for various early releases. (Those inconsistencies have since been fixed.)

This week, Microsoft took the first big step toward making up for those failures by releasing Windows 10. It is, the company says, the “last” version of Windows. What that means is that instead of launching major new versions every few years, Microsoft is going to continually update Windows, treating it as a service, rather than as a monolithic piece of software.

Getting everyone on the same basic version of Windows would be a tremendous accomplishment for Microsoft. A billion devices running the same version would make Windows, once again, an incredibly compelling platform to develop for. And it would also fix one of the company’s biggest, longest-standing bugbears: The dogged persistence of outdated versions.

Currently there are over a billion Windows devices — mostly desktop PCs and laptops — but they’re running a wide range of operating systems. According to NetMarketShare, almost 12 percent of the PCs browsing the Web today are still running Windows XP, a version of the operating system released 14 years ago. Sixty-one percent are running Windows 7, a version released six years ago, in 2009. And just over 13 percent are running the latest version, Windows 8.1, even though it’s been out for over a year.

If Microsoft succeeds in upgrading a vast number of those computers to a single OS, and adds in a bunch of mobile devices, tablets, Xboxes, and who knows, HoloLenses, all running Windows 10 and all receiving the latest feature updates and security patches as soon as they’re available, then it will have achieved one of the greatest accomplishments of its history.

You see, Apple’s great advantage right now is the relative consistency of its platform. Both OS X and iOS have a remarkably narrow range of versions on the market at any given time, and Apple is able to upgrade its customers at an impressively rapid rate after releasing new versions, a fact that the company frequently touts in its press keynotes. That consistency makes things much easier on developers.

By contrast, Microsoft and Android present more complicated ecosystems. Android is highly fragmented, with a wide variety of OS version numbers and device capabilities, and with an increasing number of derivative operating systems gaining market share. And Microsoft has long faced difficulties getting people to transition away from older versions of Windows — largely because those older versions have finally become reliable enough to be trustworthy.

So all that brings us to this week’s launch.

Winning developers over will be critical, Shaw acknowledged, and Microsoft is not taking anything for granted. For instance, Microsoft promises that it will be easy to create universal Windows apps (apps that run on desktops PCs, tablets, smartphones, wearables like the upcoming HoloLens, or even embedded devices in an Internet-of-things environment). It is even offering “platform bridges” to help developers port iOS apps, Android apps, and even Web-based applications to the new environment. But the company knows it will have to prove that this is easy and worth doing.

“We have to deliver that,” Shaw said. “It’s not something we’re going to declare success on today or tomorrow — it’s something we’ll have to show.”

Microsoft also recognizes it missed the boat with the rush to smartphones. Its operating system was hailed by designers and loved by a loyal few, but never achieved widespread market penetration. Microsoft has lost this round in the battle for mobile users, and has probably lost the war as well.

But, Shaw said, companies that have missed one technological wave still have a chance. To bolster his case, he name-checked Apple: The company lost big in the PC war by betting on a proprietary system, while IBM licensed the PC platform to all comers and Microsoft achieved operating system dominance. But Apple managed to come back, first with its colorful Bondi-blue iMacs and then later with the iPod, the iPhone, and ultimately with a tremendous resurgence in laptop computers through its MacBooks and MacBook Airs.

Similarly, Microsoft might have a chance to catch the next wave.

In five years, Shaw said, the next big thing is not going to be a slab of glass and silicon that you hold in your hand. It could be a head-mounted augmented reality display like the HoloLens. It could be something totally different. I’d agree with that — and, assuming it doesn’t torpedo itself in the near future, Microsoft has as good a shot at winning the next big technological generation as anyone.

But first Microsoft has to win over a world that, in many quarters, has written the company off as an also-ran, a dinosaur from the last computing era.

The company is “cautiously optimistic” about its new strategy, Shaw said.

Humility — and with it, a chance for redemption.

More information:

]]>0Microsoft strikes a humble pose, and hopes to earn a shot at redemptionMozilla CEO blasts Microsoft for making it harder to keep previous settings when upgrading to Windows 10http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/30/mozilla-ceo-blasts-microsoft-for-making-it-harder-to-keep-previous-settings-when-upgrading-to-windows-10/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/30/mozilla-ceo-blasts-microsoft-for-making-it-harder-to-keep-previous-settings-when-upgrading-to-windows-10/#commentsThu, 30 Jul 2015 21:54:42 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1777359Windows 10 Review Microsoft Edge will kill IE Cortana has arrived What gamers can expect Mozilla chief executive Chris Beard is not happy with Windows 10. In an open letter published addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, he chided the Redmond, Washington-based company over the its apparent decision to take away “choice and control” from the user. Beard […]
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Windows 10

In an open letter published addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, he chided the Redmond, Washington-based company over the its apparent decision to take away “choice and control” from the user. Beard admits that his team tried to work it out with Microsoft, but it “didn’t result in any meaningful progress.”

To pressure Microsoft to “undo” its actions, Mozilla is encouraging users to tell the Windows 10 manufacturer to “hit Ctrl+Z” and bring back user choice.

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At issue is Beard’s contention that when users upgrade to Windows 10 (which debuted yesterday), the new operating system wants them to have an Internet experience that Microsoft wants them to have — specifically with Microsoft’s new Edge browser. Although it’s “technically possible” to retain your previous settings and defaults, Beard believes that somehow Microsoft has buried these settings somewhere deep in the operating system that makes it hard to get to.

“With the launch of Windows 10 we are deeply disappointed to see Microsoft take such a dramatic step backward,” says Beard. In a separate post, he writes:

Sometimes we see great progress, where consumer products respect individuals and their choices. However, with the launch of Windows 10, we are deeply disappointed to see Microsoft take such a dramatic step backward. It is bewildering to see, after almost 15 years of progress bolstered by significant government intervention, that with Windows 10, user choice has now been all but removed.

Although Beard says that his team has reached out to Microsoft prior to publishing this letter, nothing has been disclosed about how far talks have gone and why no progress was made.

This isn’t the first time Microsoft has been ripped over user control. In 1998, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit against the technology company claiming that it was monopolizing the computer software industry in coupling Windows with Internet Explorer. It was alleged at the time that Microsoft had attempted to persuade Netscape to not compete against it. Netscape obviously didn’t comply.

Additionally, federal authorities claimed that Microsoft was misusing its stranglehold on the operating system world by requiring manufacturers to adopt certain standards that Microsoft set. To Beard, it doesn’t want Microsoft to “roll back the clock” to that era.

We’ve reached out to Mozilla for comment and will update this if we hear back.

Update: A Microsoft spokesperson has responded to VentureBeat’s inquiry, saying: “We designed Windows 10 to provide a simple upgrade experience for users and a cohesive experience following the upgrade. During the upgrade, consumers have the choice to set defaults, including for web browsing. Following the upgrade, they can easily choose the default browser of their choice. As with all aspects of the product, we have designed Windows 10 as a service; if we learn from user experience that there are ways to make improvements, we will do so.”

Here’s Beard’s open letter to Microsoft:

Satya,

I am writing to you about a very disturbing aspect of Windows 10. Specifically, that the update experience appears to have been designed to throw away the choice your customers have made about the Internet experience they want, and replace it with the Internet experience Microsoft wants them to have.

When we first saw the Windows 10 upgrade experience that strips users of their choice by effectively overriding existing user preferences for the Web browser and other apps, we reached out to your team to discuss this issue. Unfortunately, it didn’t result in any meaningful progress, hence this letter.

We appreciate that it’s still technically possible to preserve people’s previous settings and defaults, but the design of the whole upgrade experience and the default settings APIs have been changed to make this less obvious and more difficult. It now takes more than twice the number of mouse clicks, scrolling through content and some technical sophistication for people to reassert the choices they had previously made in earlier versions of Windows. It’s confusing, hard to navigate and easy to get lost.

Mozilla exists to bring choice, control and opportunity to everyone. We build Firefox and our other products for this reason. We build Mozilla as a non-profit organization for this reason. And we work to make the Internet experience beyond our products represent these values as much as we can.

Sometimes we see great progress, where consumer products respect individuals and their choices. However, with the launch of Windows 10 we are deeply disappointed to see Microsoft take such a dramatic step backwards.

These changes aren’t unsettling to us because we’re the organization that makes Firefox. They are unsettling because there are millions of users who love Windows and who are having their choices ignored, and the increased complexity put into everyone’s way if and when they choose to make a choice different than what Microsoft prefers.

We strongly urge you to reconsider your business tactic here and again respect people’s right to choice and control of their online experience by making it easier, more obvious and intuitive for people to maintain the choices they have already made through the upgrade experience — and easier for people to assert new choices and preferences, not just for other Microsoft products, through the default settings APIs and user interfaces.

Please give your users the choice and control they deserve in Windows 10.

Sincerely,

Chris Beard
CEO, Mozilla

More information:

]]>0Mozilla CEO blasts Microsoft for making it harder to keep previous settings when upgrading to Windows 10Windows 10 gets four new games from Game Insighthttp://venturebeat.com/2015/07/30/windows-10-gets-four-new-games-from-game-insight/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/30/windows-10-gets-four-new-games-from-game-insight/#commentsThu, 30 Jul 2015 21:02:33 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1777176Want to play some games made for Windows 10? Well, you’re in luck. Windows 10 Review Microsoft Edge will kill IE Cortana has arrived What gamers can expect Game Insight, a publisher and global developer of free-to-play mobile games that has over 300 million players, has announced today that it is launching four new titles […]
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Windows 10

Game Insight, a publisher and global developer of free-to-play mobile games that has over 300 million players, has announced today that it is launching four new titles for Windows 10 devices.

The four games are Running Shadow, Paradise Island 2, The Tribez & Castlez, and Maritime Kingdom. They’ll all contain full HD graphics and animations. Running Shadow is Game Insight’s first hardcore 3D title. It’s a blend of fantasy RPG and classic runner similar to Temple Run, with “super-human parkour” and quick-time combat sequences.

Game Insight supporting Windows 10 with a bunch of new titles makes perfect sense, as Microsoft’s new platform enables cross-platform gaming, which is very much Game Insight’s focus. Players can play a game on one Windows device and pick up where they left off on another, whether it’s on a mobile device, TV, etc.

“Our portfolio of games on the Windows platform is expanding quickly, and has already reached over 14 million players,” said Anatoly Ropotov, CEO of Game Insight. “In the coming months we’ll be introducing new genres with impressive 3D graphics and gameplay that will help us continue to provide the best possible experience for users on the platform.”

Above: Paradise Island 2 brings all the color.

Image Credit: Game Insight

Game Insight will also be bringing a bunch of its games available for Windows over to Windows 10: My Country, Airport City, Big Business Deluxe, Cloud Raiders, Mirrors of Albion, Sunshine Bay, The Tribez, Transport Empire and others.

If you’re planning on downloading Windows 10, make sure you check out our guide on how to avoid using Windows Update, and our 10 tips for Windows gamers.

More information:

]]>0Windows 10 gets four new games from Game InsightWindows 10 tips for gamers: How to save your bandwidth, do a clean install, and morehttp://venturebeat.com/2015/07/29/windows-10-tips-for-gamers-how-to-save-your-bandwidth-do-a-clean-install-and-more/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/29/windows-10-tips-for-gamers-how-to-save-your-bandwidth-do-a-clean-install-and-more/#commentsThu, 30 Jul 2015 01:40:13 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1776725We can maybe help make your Windows 10 machine run a little bit better if you follow these quick guides.
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Just because you have a new operating system doesn’t mean everything is working like it should.

Windows 10

Here’s a secret: If you installed Windows 10 today, you agreed to have your computer act as a peer-to-peer host for sharing Windows Updates. That’s pretty uncool, and it could kill your bandwidth when playing online games. But don’t worry — we’re going to show you how to turn that off and how to get the most of Microsoft’s latest operating system.

Stop using your bandwidth to share Windows updates online

Above: If you leave Windows 10 set like this, it will share update files with other users over your Internet.

Image Credit: Jeff Grubb/GamesBeat

Look, I’m all about one for all and all for one. The Three Musketeers is really great — love you, Oliver Platt — but this Windows 10 option is a bit ridiculous. When this is turned on, Windows 10 updates will behave just like a peer-to-peer sharing network similar to Torrents or Napster, if you’re old enough to remember such a thing.

But here’s how you turn it off:

Hit your Windows key on your keyboard and type “Windows update settings.” Click on the top option, which also reads “Windows update settings.”

Click on the green, highlighted words that read “Advanced options.”

Now, click on “Choose how updates are delivered.”

This is where you can make your changes. Either turn this feature off completely, or do what I did and set it to only share with other computers on your network. Hopefully this means that I will be the only one to wait a bit longer for updates, and my wife’s system will benefit from me sharing locally.

How to do a clean install of Windows 10

PCs are high-tech, complicated machines — especially if you’re running Windows. And that means that in order to get the most out of a new OS, like Windows 10, you should do a clean install instead of trying to bring along all your old files, apps, and settings from a previous version. That kind of upgrade — which is the default if you’re doing the free path to Windows 10 — can lead to all kinds of weird errors and conflicts.

But here’s the good news: You can definitely do a clean install of Windows 10 without paying for it. You just need to know where to look.

Important: No matter what, you should upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 8 or Windows 7 the normal way. People are running into errors trying to circumvent that step. Also, we won’t guarantee that this will work for Windows pirates.

OK, just like in the steps above, you’ll need to start this out by hitting your Windows key, typing “Windows update settings,” and clicking on that option in the menu.

On the left hand side, choose the “Recovery” tab.

Choose the “Reset this PC” option. Then select how you want to proceed — Windows can keep some of your files if you want, but you can also wipe everything and get back to the Windows 10 factory default.

Clean up your drives without doing a clean install

Finally, getting games to run well on your PC is a lot about maintenance. Get off to a good start with Windows 10 by doing some disk cleanup.

Hit the Windows key on your keyboard and type “Disk cleanup.” Hit the “Disk cleanup” option at the top of the start menu.

Choose the drive that hosts your primary Windows folder. This is probably C:, but it should also say “Windows.”

Select “Clean up system files” on the bottom left of the menu. It’s not in the list of options — it’s just above the “OK” button.

Once again, select your Windows drive and hit OK. In this new list, you can just go with the default cleanup — or you can also delete your previous Windows installations. I went ahead and deleted my previous installations (and got back 15GB of space in the process), because I’m never going back to Windows 8.1.

More information:

]]>0Windows 10 tips for gamers: How to save your bandwidth, do a clean install, and moreHow to download and install Windows 10 without using Windows Updatehttp://venturebeat.com/2015/07/29/how-to-download-and-install-windows-10-without-using-windows-update/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/29/how-to-download-and-install-windows-10-without-using-windows-update/#commentsWed, 29 Jul 2015 20:34:30 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1776283Windows 10 launched today (read our review), but because Microsoft is releasing its new OS in waves, not everyone can get it right away. Furthermore, some users are having trouble with Windows Update (on one of my PCs, I got an error last night, and this morning it simply got stuck on “Checking for updates”). […]
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Windows 10 launched today (read our review), but because Microsoft is releasing its new OS in waves, not everyone can get it right away. Furthermore, some users are having trouble with Windows Update (on one of my PCs, I got an error last night, and this morning it simply got stuck on “Checking for updates”). Thankfully, there’s a simple workaround.

All you need is a genuine copy of Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, Microsoft’s Windows 10 Media Creation Tool, and an Internet connection. Fair warning, though: This process will take a bit longer than going through Windows Update. It’s the manual version of everything the “Get Windows 10″ tool is supposed to handle for you. Back up everything and make sure you’re ready.

If you’re running a 32-bit copy of Windows, download the tool from here. If you’re running a 64-bit copy of Windows, download the tool from here. If you’re not sure, hold the Windows key and press the pause/break button. See what it says under “System type.”

You should see the following after downloading and launching the tool:

Hit the Next button and Windows 10 will start to download, which may take a while if you’re on a slow connection.

The verification of the download should be quick.

The Windows 10 installer is now being put together.

Now the Windows 10 installer is being loaded.

The Windows 10 installer will do a few checks.

And more.

Make sure to hit “Accept” on this screen or you’ll have to do it all again.

This part was automatic for me, but either way you’ll be given the choice again later.

Microsoft still needs to check if there are updates you may need before the installation.

And again, a few more checks.

Finally, the preparation is complete.

You can change what the Windows 10 installer will keep, but be warned that if you hit “Back” you’ll have to go through the updates and checks again.

At this point, I can’t take screenshots anymore, so here’s a few grainy pictures from my Android phone. This is the first screen you should see, before your computer restarts:

You’ll then get a warning about a restart:

And then you’ll be on this screen for probably the longest part of the upgrade process:

Be warned: Microsoft isn’t kidding about the “Your PC will restart several times.” nor the “This might take a while.” messages.

After this is all done, just type in your password, hit Next, and go through the standard process of setting up the new OS.

Before long you should be back at your Windows desktop, as if nothing has changed. But a lot has: You now have Windows 10!

More information:

]]>0How to download and install Windows 10 without using Windows UpdateXbox Live is down again as some gamers have difficulty logging on (update)http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/29/xbox-live-is-down-again-as-some-gamers-have-difficulty-logging-on/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/29/xbox-live-is-down-again-as-some-gamers-have-difficulty-logging-on/#commentsWed, 29 Jul 2015 19:54:56 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1776449After an outage for PlayStation Network last night, it is now Microsoft's turn.
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Updated at 4:45 p.m. Pacific time on Wednesday, July 29: Microsoft says Xbox Live is back up and running.

Last night and early this morning, it was PlayStation Network that was having troubles. Today, it’s Xbox Live.

Microsoft’s online gaming infrastructure is running into errors and keeping many gamers from logging into the service. This is keeping those affected from playing games like Grand Theft Auto V, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and Destiny. But it’s also creating an issue where Xbox owners cannot use apps like Netflix or Amazon Instant Video.

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“Having trouble signing in to Xbox Live? Our team is working to get this fixed ASAP,” reads the update. “Thanks for your patience while we get everything back to normal.”

This outage comes just five days after Xbox Live went through a series of downtimes that lasted for more than a day. And this is at least the fourth time the service has gone out of order this month.

But Microsoft isn’t alone in struggling to keep its console online service up and running. PlayStation Network has had at least five major outages this month, and it is in the middle of another one right now.

Previous update at 2:00 p.m. Pacific time on Wednesday, July 29: The problem has spread, and it is affecting a wide number of gamers at this time on both Xbox One and Xbox 360.

More information:

]]>0Xbox Live is down again as some gamers have difficulty logging on (update)Developers can now submit Windows 10 apps to the Windows Storehttp://venturebeat.com/2015/07/29/developers-can-now-submit-windows-10-apps-to-the-windows-store/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/29/developers-can-now-submit-windows-10-apps-to-the-windows-store/#commentsWed, 29 Jul 2015 18:41:42 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1776333Following Microsoft’s big release of Windows 10 last night, the tech company today announced that developers can now submit Windows 10 applications to the Windows Store. The Windows Store includes the beta of Minecraft: Windows Edition, as well as USA Today and Candy Crush Saga, vice president of the Windows Developer Platform at Microsoft Kevin […]
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Following Microsoft’s big release of Windows 10 last night, the tech company today announced that developers can now submit Windows 10 applications to the Windows Store.

The Windows Store includes the beta of Minecraft: Windows Edition, as well as USA Today and Candy Crush Saga, vice president of the Windows Developer Platform at Microsoft Kevin Gallo wrote in a blog post today.

And Microsoft wants to make it easy for developers to build applications that work across every Windows device — universal Windows apps, in company parlance. So today Microsoft is releasing the final version of Windows 10 developer tools inside of its Visual Studio 2015 software. The tools first became available in preview in March.

While these new dev tools, including an improved XAML designer and GPU support in the Windows 10 Mobile Emulator, are intended to simplify cross-device application development, they’re not meant to oversimplify and turn out generic apps.

“You can create a Universal Windows apps with the new project templates in Visual Studio 2015 in a language of your choice — C#, VB, C++, or JavaScript,” S. “Soma” Somasegar, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s developer division, wrote today in his own blog post. “With Windows 10, it is now possible to have a single universal app project that when deployed can run on all Windows 10 devices like PC, Phone, Tablet, or XBox. However, just as on Windows 8.1, you still have the option to have multiple projects in your solution that you can tailor for functionality and form-factor exhibited by various devices running Windows 10 and can maximize code sharing across those projects using Shared projects. You can also create Win32 applications that target the Windows 10 SDK to leverage the new APIs exposed by the platform.”

To access the new updated tools from the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) version of Visual Studio 2015 — which became available last week — go to the installer, check the Universal Windows App Development tools box, and hit the Next button, Gallo wrote. You’ll automatically get the new tools if you go from a release candidate of Visual Studio 2015 to the RTM version.

Learn more about submitting apps to the Windows Store in this blog post from Bernardo Zamora, product manager for the Windows Apps and Store team.

More information:

]]>0Developers can now submit Windows 10 apps to the Windows StorePirates are successfully upgrading to Windows 10 for freehttp://venturebeat.com/2015/07/29/pirates-are-successfully-upgrading-to-windows-10-for-free/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/29/pirates-are-successfully-upgrading-to-windows-10-for-free/#commentsWed, 29 Jul 2015 16:56:55 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1776231According to some Reddit users, Windows 10 is even showing as activated.
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Over on thesetwo Reddit threads in the subreddit Piracy, both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users are reporting they have managed to successfully upgrade their pirated copy of Microsoft’s operating system to the latest and greatest. That part isn’t a huge surprise — Microsoft did say pirates would be able to get Windows 10 — but the fact that Windows 10 is showing as “activated” is eyebrow-raising:

To be clear, these users are claiming all they did was run the “Get Windows 10″ app. They are not running cracks after the upgrade (although some are perfectly happy to take that route instead). This would imply that whatever crack these pirates used to trick Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 into becoming activated worked well enough that Microsoft’s own checks didn’t catch it, and gave the green light to get Windows 10 for free.

Just like genuine users, these pirates are even getting new Windows 10 product keys, in case they want to do a fresh install. They can use every feature, run Windows Update without any issue, and overall get the full Windows 10 experience for free just like any Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 user.

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When Microsoft revealed that Windows 10 would have seven editions, the company also disclosed that the free upgrades for genuine users were to Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Pro, and Windows 10 Mobile. On the same day that Windows 10 launched for PCs, it looks like pirates have already managed to figure out how to get the first two without paying a dime and without having to crack Windows 10.

In short, this was not supposed to happen. Pirates were supposed to be able to upgrade to Windows 10, yes, but the expectation was that they would be prompted to pay and activate — indeed, some users are experiencing just that. This would suggest that the workaround depends on the crack that was used on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1.

“We will provide a mechanism for non-genuine Windows 10 PC devices to ‘get genuine’ via the new Windows Store, whether they are upgraded versions of Windows or purchased,” a Microsoft spokesperson told VentureBeat back in March. “We will have details on this as we get closer to launch.”

We have contacted Microsoft for more information and will update you if we hear back.

Update: We’ve confirmed with a source close to Microsoft that devices which the company detects as non-genuine will not be offered the free upgrade to Windows 10. The company also gave us a generic boilerplate statement.

“We believe genuine Windows is the best Windows,” a Microsoft spokesperson told VentureBeat. “Genuine Windows is published by Microsoft, properly licensed, and supported by Microsoft or a trusted partner. According to industry experts, use of pirated software, including Non-Genuine Windows, results in a higher risk of malware, fraud (identity theft, credit card theft, etc.), public exposure of your personal information, and a higher risk for poor performance or feature malfunctions.”

The trouble here is that pirates are getting genuine Windows even though they didn’t previously have genuine Windows.

More information:

]]>0Pirates are successfully upgrading to Windows 10 for freeTwitter’s new Windows 10 app shows tweets directly in the Start menuhttp://venturebeat.com/2015/07/29/twitters-new-windows-10-app-shows-tweets-directly-in-the-start-menu/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/29/twitters-new-windows-10-app-shows-tweets-directly-in-the-start-menu/#commentsWed, 29 Jul 2015 16:41:58 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1776235You can upload up to four images in a tweet, and the app supports Vine playback and animated GIFs.
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Twitter officially launches its new universal app for Windows 10 today, and while it doesn’t hold too many surprises, it may hold one trump card: You can view tweets directly in the Start menu.

Windows 10 is Microsoft’s attempt to win fans back again, with an operating system that works across both desktop and mobile platforms — a feature it hopes can lure more developers on board.

Twitter is an important app for Microsoft and Windows, though the new app is somewhat basic. You can upload up to four images in a tweet, and the app supports Vine playback and animated GIFs.

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However, the app does seem to be missing key features, including pull-to-refresh and “Quote Tweet” — an increasingly popular facet of Twitter in other clients.

While the Twitter web client will suffice for many, perhaps the star attraction in the new app is being able to view tweets directly in Live tiles from the Start menu — a much-loved facet of Windows that Microsoft has brought back following the “lukewarm” reception garnered by Windows 8.

Live Tiles are essentially interactive squares that live on the Windows home screen on Windows Phone and the “Metro” section of Windows 8. They can show real-time updates, including breaking news, fitness data, weather, stock prices, and — now — tweets in your Start menu.

Above: Twitter and Live Tiles

Image Credit: Twitter

Given that the Start menu is a frequently visited part of Windows, Live Tiles will be a key part of Microsoft’s pitch to developers: They can now push their apps (and content) front-and-center.

Windows 10 is rolling out to users from today, but if you’ve yet to receive the update, you can force it now.

SHANGHAI — If anyone can help Microsoft be more successful with its Xbox One game console in China, maybe it will be Master Chief.

Microsoft’s Xbox chief Phil Spencer opened the ChinaJoy game trade expo with an announcement that the flagship title Halo: The Master Chief Collection will debut in August on the Xbox One in the Chinese market. That will be the first time that a Halo game has officially launched for a console in China.

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Spencer said that this year would be the best ever for Xbox worldwide with the launch of games such as Rise of the Tomb Raider, Forza Motorsport 6, and Halo 5: Guardians in global markets. These big brands will help the Xbox One and Windows 10 platforms remain competitive against rivals on a global basis.

But in China, the launches of big games lag behind those of other territories. In the case of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Microsoft launched it in November. It was probably lucky that Microsoft waited to launch it later in China, since the November software release was riddled with bugs.

Microsoft appears to have given up on cracking into Japan, the stronghold of Sony and Nintendo. But the software giant is more optimistic that China, which is expected to become the world’s biggest game market this year (according to market researcher Newzoo) will become an important market like the U.S. and Europe.

Speaking at the China Digital Entertainment Congress before the start of ChinaJoy in Shanghai, Spencer said he was proud to represent Microsoft in China, and he congratulated the nation on the growth of ChinaJoy, which draws an estimated 250,000 fans and has become one of the biggest game conferences in the world.

“The reason we are here today is not only to bring Xbox One to China but to open up the world to games made in China,” Spencer said.

He said Microsoft is making huge investments in China when it comes to hardware, intellectual property, and alliances with both large and small game publishers and developers.

“We believe it is incredibly important to open up the opportunity to all developers in China,” he said.

While he was optimistic, Spencer was also realistic. Console sales in China are expected to be around 550,000 this year, a small amount compared to markets elsewhere, according to market researcher Niko Partners.

“We know this is a long-term investment for Xbox,” he said. “We have teams here investing and are committed to growing this business slowly. But most importantly, we are doing it in collaboration with the industry. What is missing so far is a game developed in China, and games locally developed in China that are reaching large global audiences. Hopefully all of us together can strive for that success point. There is nothing more critical to me in bringing Xbox to China than unlocking the potential of developers here.”

Microsoft launched the Xbox One last fall in the Shanghai Free Trade Economic Zone in partnership with China’s BestTV last fall. Sony launched the PlayStation 4 earlier this year.

“I think it is great that Sony has brought PlayStation to China,” Spencer said. “For both of us, we see the opportunity to bring console gaming to China in a very big way and foster the development community to ensure that the best games reach the global audience.”

He noted that partner Perfect World of China had launched Neverwinter worldwide, including for the Xbox One platform.

Robert Xiao, chief executive of Perfect World, said in an interview with GamesBeat that he was happy to be called out by Spencer and that Perfect World would continue to invest in multiple projects for the Xbox One console. He said he expects Perfect World to release Xbox One games in China every year for the foreseeable future.

Spencer noted that Microsoft was throwing a big Halo party in Shanghai and that it would release Halo: The Master Chief Collection during August.

“Halo was instrumental in the development of Xbox Live,” he said, noting its importance to the Xbox community. And he said that Microsoft would also release Minecraft on the Xbox One in China.

Spencer also touted gaming on Windows 10, the new operating system launched around the world today.

“We have a lot more work to do,” Spencer said. “We need more games developed. We need more games approved. We need to continue to work on the robustness of our infrastructure and continue to improve the expertise of our team.”

Windows 10 launches today (read our review) and with it comes a whole new browser. Sure, Internet Explorer will still be there if you want, but it’s not the default. Microsoft Edge is.

The timing is almost perfect. On August 16, IE will turn 20 years old. That’s eons in Internet years, and it’s about time that Microsoft shoved it aside.

It’s still difficult to wrap your head around the fact that Microsoft is ditching all the legacy that is IE and launching a new browser built from the ground up. Yet it makes sense: This is a completely necessary step if IE is ever going to have a proper successor.

You undoubtedly want to know: is Edge any good? The short answer is: Yes, yes it is.

The long answer isn’t so simple. Edge offers a lot of new features and functionality, while remaining a lean tool for browsing the web. Microsoft is finally giving Chrome and Firefox a run for their money, but Edge is still lacking in many areas.

We sat down with Drew DeBruyne, director of program management at Microsoft, and Jason Weber, group program manager at Microsoft, to dig a little deeper into Edge.

“Knowing that browsing is still one of the very top activities that people do on a PC, we knew there was an opportunity, and really an obligation, to push the web browsing experience … and so that’s what we’ve done with Microsoft Edge,” DeBruyne told VentureBeat.

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He then laid out Microsoft’s three goals with Edge:

Build a browser that feels “responsive, fast, and lightweight” but that is also “clean, doesn’t get in your way, and also works great with the modern web.”

Build a browser that is trusted and lets people feel safe.

Build a browser that is “personal and productive,” fitting in with what Microsoft is trying to do overall as a company.

Oh, and the team wanted to deliver something that is “familiar” (you’ll hear that word used a lot in Windows 10’s marketing) “but still felt fresh.” In other words, Microsoft was attempting the impossible.

Thankfully, it’s a lot easier to achieve the impossible in the first version if you’re building from the ground up. Edge is capable of doing a lot more than IE for one simple reason: The legacy code is gone.

This leaves room to fill Edge up with new features. That said, the most important one — extensibility — still isn’t ready. Developers will “soon” be able to port their Chrome extensions and Firefox add-ons to Microsoft’s browser, but for now Edge is a powerful browser clearly not meant for power users.

Cortana

Integrating Cortana into Edge, right in the address bar, is Microsoft’s way of making the browsing experience personal. She is “there to help but not in your way,” as DeBruyne put it.

You might be wondering, why didn’t Microsoft put Cortana in a different place in Edge; why the address bar? DeBruyne spelled it out for us: “Second to the start menu, it’s probably the most trafficked place in the Windows user interface.”

In Edge, Cortana can answer 20 different types of queries inline. These include:

Stocks (e.g., MSFT, GOOG, AAPL)

Weather (just start typing the word and get the local weather)

Limited trivia (e.g., how big is the moon, how tall is the Eiffel tower, how old is Oprah Winfrey etc.)

Calculations (e.g., x + y)

Conversions (e.g., tbsp. to tsp)

Time in X country

Definition of X

Flight information

That’s a lot to cram into the address bar, which already does so much. You can expect, however, that this list will continue to grow.

Behind Edge’s address box, a relevance algorithm is constantly running and trying to match what you type to the above types of queries and possible search suggestions. On top of that, it’s searching against your local history and favorites and constantly reevaluating whether you’ve completed your query. This requires “a lot of tuning to make sure as you’re typing so you don’t get a lot of flickering,” DeBruyne explained.

Cortana assists is another way–the personal assistant augments your browsing experience in Edge. Just click on her, and she’ll pop up with additional information about the site you’re looking at, which she gleans from Bing’s entity graph. These extra details can include directions (clicking them will open the Windows 10 Maps app), an option to call the restaurant (via Skype of course), hours of operation, and so on.

To be clear, Microsoft is starting with only one type of site: restaurants. Still, Cortana assists supports 150,000 restaurants, including different physical presences for chains.

This site type was chosen because finding restaurants and booking a table “is a very common task on the web.” When asked what types of sites were next, DeBruyne listed shopping, social, and research, and frankly concluded that “we’ve looked at all of the common uses of the web.” Because the feature is server-driven, Microsoft can add new sites as well as new classes of sites without even updating Edge itself.

Lastly, there’s Ask Cortana. Whether you’re using a mouse and keyboard (select, right click, choose Ask Cortana) or a touchscreen (select, long press, choose Ask Cortana), on any page anywhere on the web, you can pick some text and get Cortana to tell you more.

For example, let’s say you select the word “Bush” on a webpage. If it’s preceded by Jeb, Cortana will know to give you more information about Jeb Bush, because she’s taking the context of the page into account. But there’s a relevance algorithm working behind this feature as well, so if the page only mentions Bush but never Jeb, Cortana will likely present you with information about Jeb anyway, because she knows that out of all the Bushes, he’s the most likely one you would be asking about right now.

Cortana’s answer is laid out differently based on what you’re asking about (people, stocks, bands, locations, etc.). Again, this information is all coming from Bing. In the worst case, Cortana will look up the definition of the word, and if that fails, she’ll just show you search results.

Reading

Reading, and productivity in general, is one of the most common things people do in the browser. “We decided we’d build a set of tools directly into the experience that make reading, and research, and capturing your thoughts really great,” DeBruyne told us.

First off, Edge has a built-in Reading List feature. It’s a simple chronological list of articles the user has saved. Interestingly, Microsoft made a conscious decision, based on user feedback and telemetry it had collected, not to build this into favorites.

It turns out, there’s quite the backstory here.

“There’s such a huge range of use cases for favorites, some people don’t use favorites at all, some people treat it as a junk drawer and search against it, and some people seem to organize their entire lives with favorites,” DeBruyne explained. “It’s pretty incredible.”

“So we decided not to mess with that and add another concept on top of favorites,” he continued. “We did a pretty straightforward implementation of favorites in terms of having hierarchical folders, a favorites bar, and so on. Instead we decided to do a separate concept with the reading list.”

It’s a decent feature, and I’ve personally told myself that once Edge gets extensions, I’ll try to use Reading List more than I do Favorites. Yes, I’m one of those that just stars sites randomly, and never ever goes back to them.

Next up is the Reading View. The goal here is to offer a “very nice, clean, distraction-free reading experience,” DeBruyne told us.

That said, it is lightly customizable: You can change the background, font size, and so on. It works well enough on the desktop, but in DeBruyne’s words it “really sings on a tablet.”

The Reading View button doesn’t light up on sites that aren’t showing an article. If a site wants to prevent Reading View, it can: just add the following meta tag to ensure this always happens when an Edge user visits.

meta name=”IE_RM_OFF” content=”true”

If you’re getting a sense of déjà vu, you’re not alone. The modern browser in Windows 8 (read: not Internet Explorer for the desktop), offered basically the same thing.

In fact, unlike Cortana, these reading features aren’t unique to Edge. Edge’s reading list is just a list and Edge’s reading view is like all the rest: It just strips out all the junk, and voilà.

Notes

In the same productivity vein, Edge has a web notes feature. Any page on the Internet can be taken into the web note view, where the user can use a bunch of tools for annotation.

This is supposed to be a simplification for the process that currently goes a little something like this: Grab the URL, copy random parts of the webpage, paste everything into a note-taking program, and annotate it there.

With Edge, the whole experience is in the browser. You can mark up the page and save it either to your Reading List or your favorites.

You can also send the marked-up page to OneNote, and other programs including email. Unfortunately, your annotations are all flattened. This means you can’t make any changes, as the marked-up page is really just an image.

Microsoft “settled on using a flattened image because it’s the most ubiquitously readable on the receiving side,” DeBruyne told us. That said, he did say a non-flattened version “could be possible in the future.”

So far, Windows 10 testers have been using this feature to annotate articles, for shopping purposes, and of course just to mess around with images of people on the web. Microsoft is hoping, however, that it will be end up being used in unforeseen ways, too.

Performance

Earlier this month, I ran a few benchmarks on beta browsers (namely Chrome Canary vs. Firefox Nightly vs. Microsoft Edge). While Edge didn’t do so well, I wasn’t using the latest build, and I was on pretty old hardware. The latest version (as part of Windows 10 build 10240) already looks a lot more promising, and I’ll be rerunning the benchmarks accordingly. In short, Edge is fast, but we can’t say it’s the fastest.

Because Microsoft plans to update Edge a lot more frequently than IE (DeBruyne told VentureBeat that “performance on the whole will continue to be a top priority for us”), and because Chrome and Firefox see new versions every six weeks or so, we don’t doubt that the winners will change as each new browser version is released. That said, what we can say with certainty right now is that Edge obliterates IE.

“We decided to leave the legacy and non-web standard IE technologies behind, and not bring them forward into Microsoft Edge,” DeBruyne said. “That gave us a huge opportunity to build a rendering engine and an app experience that’s far leaner, lighter weight, and more predictable.”

This also allowed Microsoft to tilt development even more towards web standards, just like recent versions of IE. Unlike IE, however, Microsoft also took on a different philosophy: Namely, if there is a de facto standard, the company will push towards making sites work, as opposed to being stubborn with the actual standard. DeBruyne said this has made a difference for how well Edge works “with Google properties in particular.”

The decision to use two browsers — one that is left behind for legacy purposes and the other that is aimed at the “modern web” — is a big deal for Microsoft. It means the company is “optimizing for really modern hardware.”

More specifically, Microsoft Edge takes advantage of the entire CPU, especially if it’s a quad-core — Weber estimates that “over 98 percent of the target machines that will be running Windows 10 have quad-cores.” Edge uses one core for each of the following: Main thread (user interface), Independent Rendering thread, JavaScript compiler, and JavaScript garbage collector.

“We can saturate or effectively use all four cores of the machine at the same time,” Weber told VentureBeat. “This is a really good thing from a power perspective — use the CPU and then stop doing work as fast as you can.”

Final Thoughts

That means Edge can rely completely on everything Windows 10 has to offer, can use only a modern set of APIs, and can really be built from the ground up. For example, the security container around Edge is brand new. Furthermore, this allows Edge to be essentially the same app across all form factors: “It shares a universal code base and renders webpages with the same new rendering engine,” and the user interface is “designed to adapt to whatever device it’s running on, whether a phone, laptop, or large-screen desktop PC.”

This is completely new territory for Microsoft, and the benefits are potentially huge.

Weber painted a picture of what the situation was like prior to Windows 10:

Windows is always getting better from a developer perspective: Richer APIs, richer capabilities, better performance, better security, better reliability. When we were building a browser, and were taking it downlevel, for example, IE11 to Windows 7 from Windows 8.1. In earlier versions, we were going back to Vista, which was really challenging, because the graphics stack underneath Windows Vista were five, six, seven, eight years old at the time, quite dated from a programming perspective, a performance perspective, etc. versus what was in say, Windows 8. We were trying to write code that spanned that. It was much more difficult. The way you would do that is you would create abstraction layers over the operating system below. It was more time-consuming for us; it was impacting performance as well.

Now, he’s expecting the browser team to have a much easier time:

With the Windows 10 model, everyone is always updated. We’re programming against the latest and greatest. We’re going to be migrating everyone forward to that latest and greatest. It’s really, truly a case of where the sum of the parts is greater…

And that’s what really counts with Edge. It’s not just a new Microsoft browser for Windows, it’s a new Microsoft browser for Windows 10. Because Windows 10 is a service, Edge will not only kill IE, it will finally be able to keep up with the competition.

Windows 10

You see, Microsoft plans to release Windows 10 in waves. That means even if your computer is ready, you won’t necessarily be able to download Windows 10 right away. Waiting, however, is for suckers.

Even if the Windows 10 install app still says it will “notify you when ready,” you can force Windows 7 or Windows 8 to start downloading the Windows 10 files (thanks to Reddit’s Windows 10 subreddit for helping us figure this out). We’ve laid out the instructions with screenshots to guide you through it.

First, navigate to “C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download” (you may need to replace C: with a different drive letter if you installed Windows elsewhere) and delete all the files there. This will give Windows Update a clean slate.

Open Windows Update by hitting the Windows key, typing “Windows Update” and clicking on it.

Open up the command prompt by hitting the Windows key and typing in cmd. Don’t hit enter. Right click and choose “Run as administrator.”

Type (but do not enter yet) “wuauclt.exe /updatenow” — this is the command to force Windows Update to check for updates.

Back in the Windows Update window, click “Check for updates” on the left hand side. It should say “Checking for updates…”

While this is happening, switch back to the command prompt and enter the command you already typed in.

You should now see Windows Update say that it is downloading Windows 10. Before you actually install it though, back everything up and make sure you’re ready.

Windows 10 launches today with a lot of new features (read our review). One of the most important, unique, and frankly intriguing features is Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant.

To be clear, Cortana isn’t new. She first arrived with Windows Phone 8.1 in April 2014. Yet aside from her birthday, today is arguably her most important day yet. Cortana has arrived on the PC, the market Microsoft has dominated for decades.

If you look at the desktop landscape right now, operating systems don’t really have too many differentiating features. Apple has yet to port Siri to OS X, leaving the door open for Cortana to be Windows 10’s killer feature.

So the question is: How good is Cortana? It’s not a simple question to answer because of Cortana’s nature: She’s a personal assistant, and that means she takes some time to set up and get used to, she is continuously improving, and she is constantly learning more about you.

In other words, you’re not going to immediately love or hate Cortana. You will either end up using her more and more, and she will grow on you, or you’ll find yourself not using her at all.

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This is an overview of Windows 10’s most personal feature. Microsoft is betting a lot on Cortana, and we had the opportunity to talk to Susan Hendrich, principal program manager lead on the Windows team, to learn more about what exactly Microsoft’s intelligent assistant can (and can’t) do.

Customizability

Cortana is a big deal, but don’t just take my word for it. You can tell Microsoft is excited about Cortana given where the company has placed her: When you first launch Windows 10, Cortana is available right there, in the bottom-left hand corner.

She’s right beside the Start Menu, the most trafficked area of Windows. She’s also heavily integrated in Microsoft Edge, the company’s new browser that will finally kill IE. When you first open her up, you’ll go through a quick interview process.

After that, you can change what she knows about you by adding and editing entries in her notebook (including stocks, news, sport scores, travel information, weather, food preferences, and so on). Every time you open Cortana again, she will give you a greeting and list the most relevant information for your day.

For example, if you update your notebook to say that you like French food, Cortana’s restaurant recommendations will immediately update to reflect this new fact she has learned about you. This is pretty basic, since you’re explicitly adding this customization.

But Cortana is also capable of figuring out that you might like to track something without you explicitly telling her. If you search for a stock often enough, or a band, or a company, she may ask if you want her to keep a tab on those for you.

There’s quite a bit of room for improvement though. Cortana can figure out that you’re interested in a movie and recommend show times if you’re near a theatre that’s playing it. But she can’t yet stop reminding you about that movie without you explicitly telling her: If you sat in a theatre for two hours after she recommended going to a specific cinema, if you bought tickets to the movie and they’re sitting in your email account, or if you shared your thoughts about the movie on Facebook and Twitter. Cortana is smart, but she’s not that smart, yet.

Like any personal assistant, Cortana can answer your questions, book appointments, set alarms, keep track of your meetings, and remind you about upcoming events. Reminders are probably the most useful feature of them all.

These can be related to people, to location, or even time-based. For example, you can get Cortana to tell you to buy groceries when you’re done working.

Individual notifications can be snoozed (ping me later) or dismissed (don’t ping me again). You can also turn all notifications on or off – but, you can’t turn specific types of notifications on or off.

Reminders can fire on any platform, meaning if you have Cortana on a Windows 10 PC and on an Android phone, you’ll get multiple notifications for the same thing. That said, if you dismiss the notification on one platform, it won’t fire on the other. You have to be quick!

You can also set duplicate reminders. If you set a reminder to go to the dentist tomorrow, Cortana isn’t smart enough yet to tell you that setting a second one would be redundant. Instead, she’ll happily add it and send you two notifications the next day for the exact same thing.

Voice

You can type your requests to Cortana and she can display her answers as text back to you. But Cortana really shines when you speak to her and she speaks back.

To speak to her, you’ll need a decent microphone. You’ll also need to be in a quiet place, especially if you want to be able to query her by saying “Hey Cortana.”

“This type of technology is specifically created so that you can’t say ‘hey Cortana’ and my computer will respond to you,” Hendrich told VentureBeat. “Things like I’m speaking while you’re speaking pretty loudly in the background, that’s still going to be confusing to Cortana.”

In Cortana’s settings, there’s an option for her to learn your voice. Still, even if you go through the training exercise, she still may have difficulty understanding what you’re saying if you work in a loud environment.

“Not because of a voice identity recognition issue but because it’s going to be difficult for her to do that speech recognition with those different layering of sounds in the background,” Hendrich explained. “And it really just depends on how much sound is in the background in terms of whether she gets confused by it or not.”

If you play music in the background, that’s usually okay for Cortana to disregard. The same goes for some quiet background noise. Once you throw other speech into the equation, it can get messy.

Yet Microsoft’s biggest focus in terms of voice recognition is “to invest in understanding different accents,” Hendrich emphasized. This makes sense, as comprehension full stop is more important than interpretation over various noises.

The more people use Cortana, the better she will get at understanding what people are saying. Speech recognition is “really just about getting more data” and Hendrich is confident Cortana will improve as Windows 10 rolls out across the world.

In the U.S., Cortana is voiced by American actress Jen Taylor. If you’re a Halo fan, you’ll recognize her as the same voice as Cortana in the Halo games (pictured at the top).

In many cases, Cortana’s voice is not digitized at all. It’s really Taylor’s voice or whoever else owns Cortana’s voice in a given country. If, however, there is no time to get a new answer recorded, Microsoft can have Cortana read out her response using her digitally-generated voice font, which is based on the actor’s or actress’s original voice.

You won’t be able to hear a huge difference between these two “voices” unless you listen carefully: The digitally-generated version has less pitch variation, fewer ups and downs.

If you want to hear the difference, ask general questions like “what is the square root of 1337?” and compare the answers to queries like “who is your daddy?” that have specific responses. Again, it won’t be too obvious unless you’re specifically looking for it.

Oh, and because Cortana is constantly getting smarter, she’s also getting new answers. We asked Hendrich how often Taylor is at Microsoft and were told she “comes in a couple times a month for new recordings.” That’s pretty sweet.

Personality

To say Cortana is a simple program would be a massive understatement. Hendrich says Cortana has a 24-page personality brief.

Furthermore, Cortana has an army of writers constantly adding new responses to her arsenal. Microsoft spent quite some time trying to figure out just what kind of humor Cortana should have, and ended up settling on witty humor rather than slapstick-funny humor.

Hendrich says Cortana’s writing team is not composed of purely technical writers like Microsoft would have used in the past, and there are individuals dedicated to each and every market where Cortana is available. The group includes playwrights, novelists, and overall “extremely creative” writers.

“That’s what we’ve been really focusing on really deeply over the last year: Making sure we have an extremely culturally-relatable Cortana in each of the target countries,” Hendrich told VentureBeat. Sometimes, the answers get very specific.

The writer managing Cortana in Canada, for example, told Microsoft that almost every kid wants to be a Zamboni driver. So if you ask Canadian Cortana what her favourite car is, she’ll tell you it’s a Zamboni.

(Note: I grew up in Toronto and I have never heard of anyone in Canada wanting to be a Zamboni driver. But that’s the tricky part of creating a digital assistant: Regardless of how many custom responses you add, you can’t please everyone.)

Indeed, the editorial team also makes decisions that impact Cortana in ways that may not make sense for everyone. For example, Cortana can suggest for you to set an alarm, and the default is set for 5:45 a.m. That’s not Microsoft using data to pick an average wake up time: Hendrich said that the person who manages these writers wakes up that early, and he chose that insane time as the default suggestion.

We already talked about Cortana’s voice, and how it’s Jen Taylor in the U.S. For many of the other countries, Microsoft went in and did user studies asking what people want in a personal assistant when it comes to age, gender, qualities, and so on.

For example, Hendrich said people in China told Microsoft they want a voice that sounds like it’s smiling and acts like an older sister. In the U.K., people said they wanted someone who sounds “more efficient.”

Voice aside, Microsoft also spent a lot of time crafting how Cortana looks. Even though she’s a circle, she still reacts: when Cortana is sorry, she looks sad (almost as if her shoulders are slumped forward) and when Cortana is excited, she’s jumping up and down (like when an alarm goes off and you really have to get moving).

“For the visualization, we’ve specifically chosen not to go with a facial representation and for now we’re going with a circle,” Hendrich explained. “Going with a facial visualization has a set of interesting experience complexities that we’ve been thinking about, but we really feel like for now, we can communicate emotion and have microexpressions through a circle.”

When I pointed out she said “for now” multiple times, Hendrich noted that in China, Cortana won’t be a circle. Instead, the company’s personal assistant is a cute little character with blinking eyes. Microsoft is experimenting in China because it feels like the culture is different enough there to warrant a drastic new look.

Above: Cortana’s new look for China

Image Credit: Microsoft

What’s really interesting about Cortana is that she doesn’t change based on your physical location, but rather your settings. “If a user travels to another country they will still have the Cortana from their original country,” a Microsoft spokesperson explained. “If they ask for local suggestions, e.g. restaurants, they will get whatever their Cortana knows, which might be slightly incomplete because their Cortana is not optimized for that particular country.”

In other words, if you want the Cortana in France, all you have to do is change some settings. Specifically, change your region, display language, and speech language to France. As long as Cortana is available in the country you pick, and that country matches across all three settings, you’ll be good to go.

Microsoft has not made any indication it will be blocking language or regional changes to get Cortana. So if you tire of your version of Cortana, you should be able to just swap her out.

Freshness

A lot of Cortana’s answers are powered by Bing, and so she’s constantly getting new information and features. In fact, this is probably her biggest advantage: Bing is constantly learning about the world, and Cortana can tap into that.

“Cortana and Bing share so many different technology stacks, for example speech recognition and instant answers,” Hendrich told us. “Any time Bing makes improvements in those areas, Cortana’s going to instantly see that improvement as well. One of things that’s so great in having that close relationship with Bing: Truly and utterly Cortana is improving weekly.”

In short, the two are very closely related. That said, the “instantly” part isn’t exactly true.

The writing team has the ability to add new responses based on Cortana’s logs, which can highlight trending questions. In other words, Microsoft can see what people are asking Cortana, and which queries are not getting suitable responses.

In fact, one of Cortana’s newest features was built thanks to the logs. Many were asking her “What’s up?” and Microsoft decided to take the opportunity and build a “random fact of the day” answer. Now, the writing team writes a new little tidbit for every single day.

If something very important is happening and users are asking about it, the Cortana team can add new answers to questions “really quickly,” Hendrich says. In fact, going forward Microsoft plans to introduce capabilities on Bing and Cortana simultaneously, so that both products can learn from each other. Until now, capabilities started on Bing and the Windows team would decide whether to bring them to Cortana (which would require some extra work, like language generation).

Final thoughts

Cortana is not the first digital assistant, and she won’t be the last. Yet she is the first digital assistant on the PC that matters. She is going to crush all the poor attempts that have been made so far, and she will also pave the road for alternatives.

Digital assistants are not a new idea by any stretch, but now they’re finally becoming powerful enough to actually be useful. If Cortana succeeds on the PC, you can expect she will soon see competition.

The real test for Cortana will of course be how much time and resources Microsoft dedicates to keeping her fresh. If she can gain capabilities as quickly as Google Now and Siri, Microsoft will be lending a helping hand to hundreds of millions of desktop users.

More information:

]]>0Cortana on Windows 10: Your PC gets a personal assistantWindows 10 gaming team explains what you can expect from the new OShttp://venturebeat.com/2015/07/28/windows-10-gaming-team-explains-what-you-can-expect-from-the-new-os/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/28/windows-10-gaming-team-explains-what-you-can-expect-from-the-new-os/#commentsWed, 29 Jul 2015 04:00:42 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1775515Microsoft wants to make Windows 10 the best gaming experience yet.
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Windows 10 is launches tomorrow (our early impressions), and it’s going to bring a bunch of Xbox gaming features to Microsoft’s biggest product.

The Xbox app in Windows 10 is about to unleash a plethora of new gaming capabilities for PC players. These include GameDVR, cross-device play, and streaming of Xbox One games to a local PC or Windows 10 tablet. It’s a lot of new integrations that should make playing games on your PC feel more active and alive.

It’s one thing for us to tell you about it, but you’ll get to try it all out soon for free if you use your upgrade from Windows 7 or 8. And if you can’t wait that long, check the video below to see Microsoft run through a demonstration of the new features:

More information:

]]>0Windows 10 gaming team explains what you can expect from the new OSReview: 10 days with Windows 10http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/28/review-10-days-with-windows-10/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/28/review-10-days-with-windows-10/#commentsWed, 29 Jul 2015 04:00:05 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1775806Windows 10 is here.
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Windows 10 just launched, but it isn’t done. It’s never going to be done, at least if you ask Microsoft.

It’s incredibly difficult to review an operating system that is being developed as a service. So, because the operating system will be getting major updates, our review will too.

We’ll be putting Windows 10 under the microscope more than once. The latest version, build 10240, has been available to testers for less than two weeks. Already though, right after this review goes live, Microsoft will release a massive “Day One update” that will fix various bugs, improve stability, and boost performance.

So the build that I’ve been using for the last 10 days, and the builds that testers and I have tried for the last few months, doesn’t accurately represent the Windows 10 you will get. I can’t tell you how Windows 10 will work for you, but I can tell you what does and what doesn’t work in general.

Features

Microsoft’s personal intelligent assistant gets the job done. That said, you’ll have to spend some time setting her up and getting used to her. If you don’t, you’ll probably just use her like a search engine, though that’s not all that bad.

More importantly, you may not be able to use her at all. Cortana for Windows 10 is available in the U.S., the U.K., China, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain. Next, she is coming to Japan and Australia, as well as Canada and India (in English). After that, Cortana is heading to Brazil and Mexico, and to Canada (in French). Live somewhere else? Keep waiting.

If you use Chrome extensions or Firefox add-ons, you’ll want to download a new browser. Most users will find Edge to be adequate in terms of features, and fast in terms of performance. In short, Edge is powerful, but it’s not for power users.

Start: Works brilliantly. The Start menu is back and it’s better than ever. The best part is that you can customize it quite a bit (including by pinning not just apps but full-fledged programs as well), and frequently used options are right where they should be.

Task View: Works well. Think of this like the home section of the Alt+Tab feature. It shows all your open windows so you can just click on the one you want.

Xbox: Works, but you’ll need the right hardware. That means an Xbox controller if you want to just play Windows games that support it, but you’ll also need more than just an Xbox One if you want to stream games from your console to your computer.

More specifically, your PC, laptop, or tablet needs to meet the following hardware requirements for game streaming: a 1.5GHz multicore processor, 4GB of RAM or more, and ideally a wired Ethernet connection (an 802.11 N or newer wireless adapter is recommended otherwise).

Built-in apps: Don’t really work. These apps are basic, and if you spend any serious time inside them, chances are you’ll be looking to install an alternative. That’s fine as that’s exactly what they’re for, but just don’t set your expectations too high.

Photos gets the job done, but doesn’t let you do any serious editing. Mail doesn’t offer a unified inbox, and Calendar still needs some fine tuning. Maps is also decent, but it doesn’t always provide very much detail, so you’ll often find yourself firing up your browser. The Music and Movies & TV apps crash and hang on the regular.

Windows Store: Doesn’t work. That may seem harsh, but it’s the truth. It’s also completely expected: apps are only starting to flow in now, and you’re going to have to wait a little before there’s a proper selection.

Aside from Cortana and Edge, this is probably the biggest bet Microsoft is making in Windows 10. The company is clearly hoping users will not only use the store to get apps and games, but also to buy and rent music, movies, and TV shows. A true digital store, if you will.

Bugs and Updates

Windows 10 still has plenty of bugs. Any Windows Insider will probably be able to list a handful for you. Even after the Day One update, I suspect some of these will remain.

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It’s important to emphasize, however, that none of these bugs are showstoppers. Chances are you won’t experience any of them.

On the other hand, Windows 10 is not invincible. You may see apps crash or even the whole system hanging. If you aren’t dying to upgrade, wait it out.

Again, Windows 10 is “done” but that doesn’t mean it’s ready for everyone. Today is the day it is starting to roll out, with a huge emphasis on the word “starting.”

Microsoft hopes that by the time you get Windows 10, it will work as expected on your machine. If you’re willing to deal with potential issues, go ahead and upgrade. If you want it today and want to minimize the chance of problems, go out and buy a new Windows 10 PC.

Regardless of how you get Windows 10 though, make sure to run Windows Update a few times. Microsoft isn’t kidding about Windows 10 as a service: Fixes really are going to be delivered on the fly.

Not just that, but Windows 10 will be getting a ton of new features. Some of these are expected and have been discussed before: Microsoft Edge extensions and messaging integration with Skype, for example. Many business and enterprise additions are also in the pipeline.

Others haven’t been revealed yet because Microsoft wants to make them a surprise. A few will arrive later this year, but already some are slated for 2016.

More information:

]]>0Review: 10 days with Windows 10How to get Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition for free if you own the PC versionhttp://venturebeat.com/2015/07/28/how-to-get-minecraft-windows-10-edition-for-free-if-you-own-the-pc-version/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/28/how-to-get-minecraft-windows-10-edition-for-free-if-you-own-the-pc-version/#commentsWed, 29 Jul 2015 03:22:46 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1775795Microsoft has a new version of Minecraft for its latest Windows release.
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Microsoft isn’t just releasing Windows 10 tomorrow (our early review), it’s also preparing to roll out a new version of one of its most popular games.

Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition is real, and it is completely free if you already own the game on PC. You just need to go through a few steps.

More information:

]]>0How to get Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition for free if you own the PC versionPorn site SugarDVD wants HoloLens owners to download Kim Kardashian’s bodyhttp://venturebeat.com/2015/07/28/porn-site-sugardvd-wants-hololens-owners-to-download-kim-kardashians-body/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/28/porn-site-sugardvd-wants-hololens-owners-to-download-kim-kardashians-body/#commentsTue, 28 Jul 2015 21:55:42 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1775465Technology and porn always seem to work well together, and SugarDVD wants to ensure it has a place in the VR and AR future.
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We can all agree that virtual reality and augmented reality are really just news ways for us to enjoy adult films. And at least one company has stepped up to ensure we’ll have plenty of XXX content for our shiny new head-mounted displays.

SugarDVD, which refers to itself as “the Netflix of porn,” wants to make a HoloLens app, and it is already planning some bold features that may “break the Internet.” Porn has always had a deep relationship with technology. It has helped propel a number of new content platforms and formats into new markets, and now it is in a position to do that once again.

This news comes a few months after the site announced that it is working on a virtual reality app for the Oculus Rift headset and Google Cardboard (another solution that turns mobile phones into VR displays). But it’s putting that on hold to focus on AR. The company is even saying that it thinks the way HoloLens augments reality, by placing a transparent screen over the real world, is a better fit for how it wants to approach the next generation of adult films.

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“Oculus’s technology doesn’t seem to be at the place we want it to right now for fully customized content,” SugarDVD spokesperson Rebecca Bolen said. “With augmented reality, there seems to be more possibilities for interactivity. Rather than just witnessing a 360-degree peripheral of adult content, we want users to be able to interact with their surroundings.”

So SugarDVD is asking Microsoft for a grant to partake in its HoloLens For Research program, which it announced earlier this month. You can see it working with case Western Reserve University in the video below:

But the problem for SugarDVD — and you may have already spotted this — is that it is not an accredited academic college or university. And Microsoft is only issuing grants to those types of institutions. But Bolen makes an interesting point for why something like SugarDVD is crucial to the future of HoloLens.

As we mentioned, pornography was quick to adopt technologies like VHS, DVD, and the Internet, and — surprise, surprise — people bought VHS players, DVD players, and PCs. SugarDVD thinks the same will happen for VR and AR.

And the company is already posing some serious questions about how this tech will change not only porn but also the notion of identity. Here are some things that SugarDVD is asking:

“What is a one-night stand going to look like 20 years from now?”

“What will sexting be like 10 years from now?”

The company is even posing the idea of “downloadable body scans.”

“Instead of Kim Kardashian’s photos ‘breaking the Internet,’ it could be her body
scan, for downloadable use in augmented reality,” reads the SugarDVD press release.

More on Windows 10

Nvidia and AMD have already made all the preparations to ensure that their graphics cards will work with Windows 10. Some consumers have used Windows 10 for weeks as part of Microsoft’s Windows Insider program, and both of the graphics giants have already launched drivers that have enabled people to get the most out of gaming from the new OS.

But we still wanted to check in with Nvidia and AMD to make sure that the drivers they’ve launched are fully ready for Windows 10.

“Our drivers are [Windows Hardware Quality Labs testing] certified for Windows 10, and we have those Windows 10 certified drivers available on Windows Update today,” a spokesperson for Nvidia told GamesBeat. “In fact, we have had WHQL certified drivers for Windows 10 since May 15.”

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Nvidia said it started preparing for Windows 10 “years ago.”

“We have actively been working with Microsoft to define and test Windows 10 and DirectX 12,” another Nvidia spokesperson elaborated. “Our first WHQL driver for Windows 10 dropped on May 15 and we have released updates since then. Our ‘launch’ driver for Windows 10 was released this weekend and is already available.”

We got a similar note from AMD, who said that it’s Windows 10 drivers are also already out.

“Windows 10 support is in the 15.7 drivers available on our website now,” an AMD spokesperson said.

Of course, getting drivers in place to ensure your games run is the bare minimum of what you’re going to want from Windows 10. What this upgrade really means is the potential for improved performance — and we’ll no more about that tomorrow. For now, rest assured that you should have no troubles continuing your Rocket League or The Witcher 3 games once you make the switch to Windows 10.

More information:

]]>0Windows 10 is coming, and both AMD’s and Nvidia’s graphics cards are readyMicrosoft’s HoloLens TV studio is upgrading one of gaming’s cheesiest tropeshttp://venturebeat.com/2015/07/28/microsofts-hololens-tv-studio-looks-like-the-future-of-fmv-gaming/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/28/microsofts-hololens-tv-studio-looks-like-the-future-of-fmv-gaming/#commentsTue, 28 Jul 2015 17:30:05 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1775363Microsoft has already built a studio to make holograms for its augmented-reality device.
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We don’t know exactly what gaming is going to look like when it comes to Microsoft’s take on augmented reality, but it sure looks like the company could bring us the next generation of full-motion video (FMV) games with HoloLens.

The company has released a new video that shows how it captures and translates real people and objects into 3D characters that work in the HoloLens head-mounted display. To create these “holograms,” Microsoft points more than 100 cameras at actors and then runs that video data through a number of algorithms to build the three-dimensional models. It’s a complicated process, as you’ll see, but the end result creates actors that appear to exist in the world around you. And once you see it in action, it’s not a huge leap to imagine game developers using similar tech to build games around recording video like this — just like studios used to back in the early days of CD gaming with FMV.

FMV games were slightly interactive movies that featured real people acting as characters and talking to you through your television. Yes, it is as dumb as it sounds, but that also kinda made it incredible. You should check out clips from Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 to see Oscar-award winning actor J.K. Simmons give you a few pointers about your real-time strategy game.

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Filming actors for games is something that has fallen way out of favor, but maybe it could make a come back if they were also holograms.

Check out Microsoft’s HoloLens video-recording tech below to see what we mean:

The methodology for creating this content is way more complicated than pointing a camera at something. After capturing the original footage, it transforms the data into a point-map data that provides a rough outline of a 3D body. In the video, Microsoft points out that this provides more than 2.7 million points of data per frame.

Microsoft’s software then turns the point map into a “water-tight mesh that gives the 3D characters a bubbly skin that eliminates holes.

Next, Microsoft determines important features — like faces and hands — to preserve details. This enables the company to build a final wireframe mesh that they can build a texture onto.

This is an intricate technique, but it’s also one that produces a video file that you can easily stream over the Internet or a mobile network. Microsoft notes that the clips in its video are streaming at about 12 megabits per second. This means that you could build content like this for HoloLens that people will watch on demand through sites similar to YouTube.

Microsoft’s online infrastructure is not working properly for everyone today.

Xbox Live is having connectivity problems for many people on Xbox One and Xbox 360, according to a number of complaints from people on social media and confirmed by Microsoft. This is preventing people from accessing the servers for games like Destiny, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and more. Many people are also having troubles starting multiplayer parties and using other network features.

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Additionally, Microsoft has noted that its Xbox Store is busted as well as the movie, television, and music apps. This means no Hulu, no Netflix, and no Twitch. This is particularly a bummer considering the Xbox One Twitch app is one of the best ways to watch livestreams on your television, and today is when Summer Games Done Quick started.

We’ve asked Microsoft for an update, and we’ll update this post with any new information from the company. But the company has updated its Xbox Live status website to confirm the errors.

“Are you running into issues creating or joining multiplayer matches,” asks the status page. “Additionally, are you having trouble joining parties or sending party invites? We’re aware of the issue and hard at work to find a fix.”

These kinds of problems don’t always affect everyone equally, and if you’re online with your Xbox Live account right now, avoid getting offline. Most of the issues seem to hit people trying to boot up their system for the first time today.

This is just the most recent of a number of outages for Xbox Live. The service has gone down a number of times this year — although it isn’t alone. Sony’s PlayStation Network has definitely had a ton of problems of its own. Microsoft’s online system has gone down at least twice this month while PSN has had more than four major outages in July.

More information:

]]>0Xbox Live down for many gamers today (update)China to allow game console sales across whole country, report sayshttp://venturebeat.com/2015/07/25/china-to-allow-game-console-sales-across-whole-country-report-says/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/25/china-to-allow-game-console-sales-across-whole-country-report-says/#commentsSat, 25 Jul 2015 17:16:33 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1773987The Wall Street Journal reports that Chinese authorities will widen the distribution of game console sales.
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Chinese authorities have decided to allow the sale of video game consoles across their whole country, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. If this enables players to fully adopt the machines in the world’s largest game market, then it could be a significant boost for the entire game industry.

After a 14-year ban, China had previously begun allowing the sale of consoles such as Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4 last year. But sales were restricted to Shanghai’s economic development zone.

Microsoft launched the Xbox One in Shanghai in the fall, and Sony waited until earlier this year to launch the PS4. But a lack of local game content and limited distribution led to poor sales.

I’ll be heading to the ChinaJoy game trade show in Shanghai next week, and 250,000 people are expected to attend the event. The consoles will no doubt be a major topic of conversation.

Niko Partners, which specializes in Asian-games-market research, previously said that it expects only 550,000 total PlayStation 4 and Xbox One systems to sell in China in 2015. However, Niko said that sales will improve if the prices for the systems drop and if more triple-A titles become available in the region.

China’s entire gaming market is expected to hit $22.2 billion this year, up 23 percent from a year earlier, according to market researcher Newzoo.

Three weeks after first revealing that the Surface 3 (4G LTE) device was launching in a handful of European countries, Microsoft has finally announced when it’s going to arrive for U.S. consumers — and that day is today.

The 4G Surface 3 is available through AT&T today. Business customers can get one at T-Mobile @Work starting July 31. An unlocked version will be available in the U.S. through Microsoft’s retail stores, as well as through partner outlets and other third-party sellers.

The tablet comes in two “unlocked” versions — 64GB and 128GB. However, Microsoft is reminding consumers that they’ll need SIM cards to use the 4G, and thus the computing giant is also offering AT&T and T-Mobile SIMs through its own retail stores across the U.S.

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Additionally, AT&T will have exclusive access (among network carriers) to sell the device under contract until July 31, after which T-Mobile will also be offering the tablet to its business customers. It’s also expected to land on Verizon at some point in the future.

Priced at $500 (2GB RAM, 64GB storage) and $600 (4GB RAM, 128GB storage), the Microsoft Surface 3 was announced in March of this year, and launched two months later. The two-in-one tablet/laptop device was a follow-up to the Surface Pro 3 that was introduced in 2014 — though at $800, that was a pricier contraption than its successor, due in large part to its more powerful processor and larger, high-res screen.

Microsoft hasn’t yet announced an official price for the LTE version for the Surface 3, which doesn’t yet appear to be available through its online store, but we’re told it should cost around $100 more than the non-LTE version. That means this device will set you back around $600, but we’ll update here when we can confirm a specific figure.

Today’s news means the Surface 3 LTE is now available in Japan, where it first launched back in June, as well as Germany, the U.K., France, and Spain.

Update

Microsoft has confirmed the pricing for the unlocked version of the Surface 3 LTE — it will set you back $599 for the version with 2GB RAM and 64GB of storage, and $699 for 4GB RAM and 128GB of storage.

Elsewhere, AT&T has also confirmed that its customers can procure the 64GB version for $0 upfront, and then monthly instalments of $30 for 20 months. The carrier is also letting you obtain one for a knockdown £400, when you buy any Lumia smartphone.

Microsoft has issued a correction about the availability of the Surface 3. We have amended this post accordingly.

]]>0Microsoft Surface 3 LTE goes on sale “unlocked” in the U.S., AT&T gets carrier preference for nowFacebook, Microsoft, and Dropbox team up to make tech more accessible to people with disabilitieshttp://venturebeat.com/2015/07/23/facebook-microsoft-and-dropbox-team-up-to-make-tech-more-accessible-to-people-with-disabilities/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/23/facebook-microsoft-and-dropbox-team-up-to-make-tech-more-accessible-to-people-with-disabilities/#commentsThu, 23 Jul 2015 14:26:23 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1772632The tech world's lack of consideration for people with disabilities has been making headlines.
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Facebook, Microsoft, Dropbox, and several other tech notables are coming together to make technology more accessible to people with disabilities.

Together these companies and educational partners like Stanford and Carnegie Mellon University, have designed a working group called Teaching Accessibility. The mandate is to develop guides for building technology that everyone can use. The group will examine human-computer interaction, engineering education, and design concepts that better cater to diverse populations.

They’ve timed the announcement of the new alliance to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which then-President George H.W. Bush signed into law on July 26, 1990.

The tech world’s lack of consideration for people with disabilities has been making headlines lately. Earlier this year, Uber faced lawsuits for not complying with the American with Disabilities Act. Since then it’s launched a pilot that services drivers with hearing limitations and passengers with physical disabilities. Despite these small efforts, Massachusetts attorney general has launched an investigation into how on-demand car services are providing for riders with disabilities in Massachusetts, which means other states could follow.

Though it struggles with appeasing legislators, Uber isn’t one of the twenty tech companies and educational institutions that have joined Teaching Accessibility. But the involvement of companies like LinkedIn, Yahoo, and Facebook stands to draw attention to an issue that usually languishes out of sight.

]]>0Facebook, Microsoft, and Dropbox team up to make tech more accessible to people with disabilitiesMicrosoft launches Advanced Threat Analytics out of preview following Aorato acquisitionhttp://venturebeat.com/2015/07/22/microsoft-launches-advanced-threat-analytics-out-of-preview-following-aorato-acquisition/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/22/microsoft-launches-advanced-threat-analytics-out-of-preview-following-aorato-acquisition/#commentsWed, 22 Jul 2015 17:00:04 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1771761Microsoft today announced that its Advanced Threat Analytics software for companies’ on-premises data centers is now generally available. The release comes two months after Microsoft came out with a free public preview of the software. Advanced Threat Analytics “helps companies identify advanced persistent threats before they can cause damage,” Brad Anderson, corporate vice president of […]
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Microsoft today announced that its Advanced Threat Analytics software for companies’ on-premises data centers is now generally available. The release comes two months after Microsoft came out with a free public preview of the software.

Advanced Threat Analytics “helps companies identify advanced persistent threats before they can cause damage,” Brad Anderson, corporate vice president of enterprise client and mobility at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post on the news. When he announced the preview of the software, Anderson wrote that it brings “Azure AD [Active Directory] style security monitoring and anomaly detection on-premises.”

Once the software gets a sense of every employee’s typical activity and access patterns, it detects unusual behavior, which could suggest an issue. The idea, of course, is to discover incidents right away and mitigate damage. The tool looks out for cases of remote execution, brute force attacks, skeleton key malware, and pass-the-ticket attacks, among other things.

The software is one component of Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS), which the company announced at the same San Francisco press event where chief executive Satya Nadella unveiled Office for iPad.

EMS now has more than 17,000 customers, Anderson wrote.

Microsoft today also announced the general availability of support for its Azure Rights Management service for Office for iPad. As a result, company admins can set up rules for the things employees can do with certain files.

Always late to the party these days, Microsoft is finally joining the fight against revenge porn.

The company joins Google, Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter in promising to remove links to revenge porn as requested.

In a blog post, Microsoft says that it will honor requests to have revenge porn and photos and videos taken out of Bing search results. It will also remove access to revenge porn that’s been shared on OneDrive or Xbox Live.

Revenge porn is a practice wherein your ex-beau uploads lewd nudie pictures (and sometimes videos) of you and your private bits to a website that will charge you money to have that material taken down.

Removing links to this kind of content is sadly only a small step towards eradicating revenge porn sites, but it does hamper distribution. For more information, Microsoft encourages people to check out Cyber Civil Rights Initiative and Without My Consent.

More information:

]]>0Microsoft joins Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Reddit in fight against revenge pornMicrosoft launches lightweight email app Send for iPhone, coming soon to Android and Windows Phonehttp://venturebeat.com/2015/07/22/microsoft-launches-lightweight-email-app-send-for-iphone-coming-soon-to-android-and-windows-phone/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/22/microsoft-launches-lightweight-email-app-send-for-iphone-coming-soon-to-android-and-windows-phone/#commentsWed, 22 Jul 2015 13:43:35 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1771916Microsoft announced a new standalone email app today called Send, available only for iPhone-users in the U.S. and Canada for now.
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Rumors first emerged of such an app back in May, though it was originally believed it would be called Flow.

It’s clear that Microsoft doesn’t want to cannibalize its main Outlook email app with this latest offering — the company said it’s looking to target those situations when you just need to send snappy messages to coworkers.

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With Send, Microsoft is doing away with subject lines and signatures — it’s all geared towards short-form conversations. So rather than using this for sending notes from meetings, it’s more about imparting key facts or asking quick questions such as “I’m running 10 minutes late” or “Where is the meeting being held?”

And while it does kind of resemble text messaging, it’s linked in with a user’s Outlook account, tapping email addresses rather than mobile phone numbers.

Only messages sent through this app will be visible within Send — but in Outlook, all messages will be visible from across both services.

Besides the initial geographic and platform restrictions, the Send app will also only work for those with Office 365 business and school email accounts, though once Microsoft has garnered feedback it does plan to open things up “in the coming months.” It will also be launching for Android and Windows Phone.

Given that Send is a Microsoft Garage project, it may never actually become an official Microsoft product. But it does actually seem like quite a good idea for mobile-centric workplaces — and despite losing market share elsewhere in the consumer realm, Microsoft still holds significant mindshare in the enterprise.

More information:

]]>0Microsoft launches lightweight email app Send for iPhone, coming soon to Android and Windows PhoneMicrosoft misses in Q4 2015 with restructuring penalties, lower phone and Office saleshttp://venturebeat.com/2015/07/21/microsoft-reports-strong-22-2b-in-revenue-as-surface-sales-surge-117-to-888m/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/21/microsoft-reports-strong-22-2b-in-revenue-as-surface-sales-surge-117-to-888m/#commentsTue, 21 Jul 2015 20:26:19 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1771242Microsoft today reported that it brought in $22.2 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter of its 2015 fiscal year, which ended on June 31. Analysts were expecting $22.06 billion in revenue for the quarter. Meanwhile, Microsoft reported 40 cents in operating loss per share as a result of a $7.5 writedown related to the […]
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Microsoft today reported that it brought in $22.2 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter of its 2015 fiscal year, which ended on June 31. Analysts were expecting $22.06 billion in revenue for the quarter.

Meanwhile, Microsoft reported 40 cents in operating loss per share as a result of a $7.5 writedown related to the 2014 acquisition of the Nokia Devices and Services business, as well as a $780 million charge for the restructuring plan announced earlier this month, the company said in its press release about the earnings statement. Microsoft said it also faced a separate $160 million charge because of its earlier restructuring activity.

Altogether, Microsoft is delivering a $3.19 billion net loss — or a 40 cent loss per share — to shareholders. Revenue was down 5 percent year over year.

Microsoft stock was down more than 3 percent after the earnings release.

The declining PC market resulted in decreases for Office commercial and consumer revenue and Windows OEM and volume licensing revenue. Revenue for Microsoft’s Lumia and non-Lumia phones both fell, too.

This is all in stark contrast to Microsoft’s past four quarters, when the company has either met or beat expectations.

Despite that context, there are some bright spots for Microsoft to point to today. Commercial cloud revenue, for products like Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics CRM Online, was up 88 percent year over year, growing by $832 million, with an annual run rate of $8 billion.

Surface revenue grew by 117 percent year over year, up to $888 million. And first-party video game revenue — think Minecraft — was up 62 percent, to $63 million. Speaking of games, Microsoft sold 1.4 million Xbox consoles, up year over from 1.1 million.

Microsoft made a couple of significant business deals in this final quarter of its 2015 fiscal year.

First, the company sold to alternative cab company Uber the cameras it used to collect mapping imagery, as well as a data center near Boulder, Colorado and the 100 engineers who worked on Bing maps.

Second, Microsoft offloaded to AOL the management and sales of display, mobile, and video ads on Microsoft properties like Outlook Mail, Xbox, and Skype in nine countries.

More information:

]]>0Microsoft misses in Q4 2015 with restructuring penalties, lower phone and Office salesMicrosoft sold 1.4M Xbox systems last quarterhttp://venturebeat.com/2015/07/21/microsoft-sold-1-4m-xbox-systems-last-quarter/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/21/microsoft-sold-1-4m-xbox-systems-last-quarter/#commentsTue, 21 Jul 2015 20:24:03 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1771414Xbox One still makes a lot of business sense for Microsoft.
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The Xbox One may not always beat the PlayStation 4, but the device is starting to gain some momentum from a business perspective for Microsoft.

Microsoft reported the results of its fiscal 2015 today, and the company confirmed that the Xbox business is making more money than last year. The megaconglomerate confirmed it sold 1.4 million Xbox systems in the fourth quarter, which includes both the 360 and Xbox One. That’s up from 1.1 million during Microsoft’s previous fourth quarter.

Revenue for Microsoft’s gaming division were also up 27 percent year-over-year, and it credits that growth spurt to increased console sales, transactions on Xbox Live, and a better slate of first-party releases (including Minecraft). With the console gaming business worth more than $30 billion worldwide, Microsoft likely sees its fiscal 2015 as transition period where it can take a bigger slice of that total through the next 12 months and beyond.

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In its earnings press release, the company went into further detail about its success with the Xbox.

But it wasn’t just the hardware that is booming for Microsoft. The company, like others in the gaming space, is seeing significant growth when it comes to digital.

“Xbox Live transactions revenue increased $205 million or 58 percent, reflecting increased users and revenue per user,” reads the report.

Put simply, that means that more people are buying Xbox Live Gold subscriptions and purchasing digital games and downloadable content through the Xbox Live interface.

But back to hardware, Microsoft has seemingly figured out the atoms business. In its earnings reports, the company combines computer and gaming hardware, and it revealed that money from this sector — which includes both the Surface and Xbox systems — its revenue has increased $591 million or 44 percent.

But even the Surface and Xbox weren’t enough to undo Microsoft’s flailing phone initiative.

For this round of consoles, both Sony and Microsoft went with internal chip architecture that behaves much more like the guts of a traditional gaming PC. But a potential addition to the Xbox One may make it almost indistinguishable from a computer.

Microsof gaming boss Phil Spencer implied on Twitter that the Xbox One is getting keyboard-and-mouse support. Really, that means the system will work with a USB mouse because the system already has keyboard support. Sure, a few companies like Xim4 have released adapters for systems like the PlayStation 4 to enable you to plug in a keyboard-and-mouse setup, but Microsoft is talking about adding official support.

We’ve asked Microsoft if this means you can use the keyboard-and-mouse setup to play games or just navigate the interface. We’ll update this post with any new information.

@lgriao@PNF4LYFE@Tak225Th Yep, keyboard and mouse support for Xbox would need to be there for this to work, those aren't far away.

Spencer brought up the possibility in response to the idea of streaming a Windows 10 PC to the Xbox One. Right now, in preparation for the release of the newest operating system later this month, the Xbox team is working on enabling gamers to stream their Xbox One on a PC. That feature will go live when Windows 10 goes live.

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But Spencer says he’s interested in doing it the other way as well.

“Still finishing Xbox-to-Win10 streaming right now,” he said. “I like the idea of Win10-to-Xbox One streaming but don’t have a plan yet.”

Obviously, in order to use Windows 10 on an Xbox One, you’re going to need to support the most common input devices for PC.

“Mouse is what we’d need to add,” said Spencer.

The Xbox One is on an update schedule that sees Microsoft releasing a patch about once a month. The aforementioned Windows 10 streaming is the big feature for July, but in previous months Microsoft has used this monthly improvement cycle to add features like screenshot capturing.

It’s possible, with these rapid additions, that we could see official mouse support on Xbox One before the end of the year.

Microsoft today made available a bunch of quirky images for people to download in celebration of the launch of Windows 10 on July 29, just eight days away.

All of the new images, in various resolutions and available for a wide range of devices, feature a courageous blue-eyed cat named Ninjacat. Different images depict Ninjacat riding atop various animals, including a unicorn.

What started as an odd rendering on DeviantArt ended up turning into “a fun little internal joke” at Microsoft, Gabe Aul, Microsoft’s general manager for the operating system group’s data and fundamentals team, wrote in a blog post today.

Microsoft’s take on Ninjacat, including a flag commemorating Windows 10, has taken off among early users of the forthcoming operating system — Windows Insiders, for the uninitiated. Now Microsoft has come out with a slew of new images of the Ninjacat for Windows enthusiasts to enjoy and remix.